I wrote a super simple bot that boosts anything from a hashtag. The poor man's group feature. https://github.com/Gargron/boost-bot
@Gargron Um perhaps im missing something but wheres the .env file??
@Gargron what would you use this for?
@valerauko ambassador accounts. you can't follow an instance or a hashtag. but you could follow an account that boosts them
@Gargron how is that an improvement over pinning a hashtag's column?
@valerauko @Gargron If I understand the federation model correctly: it can help new accounts get their posts propagated to other instances.
Pinning a hashtag will miss any posts that belong to users on other instances who haven't been followed by someone on your instance.
@valerauko @Gargron Maybe we could make it so that the bot can boost more than one hashtag: I could not find any way to pin more than one hashtag in the same column. :-/
@Gargron Speaking of such, I've done a bunch of tagging but I don't see my own toots coming up when I search for those hashtags, eg for #linuxmint
@Gargron Lots of potential here!
@Gargron
Not afraid that people will use the chosen hashtag even if it is not related to their toots just to be boosted?
Right now I don't think most users care about boosts that much on Mastodon but it might change in the future and become more like Twitter and Facebook where many users seem to be running after visibility.
In the end I don't think adding a non-related hashtag to a toot just to get one boost is worth it but some people might think otherwise which could lead to an abuse of the hashtag and make it useless. It was just a thought I add when reading the toot about this idea.
@kaiwen it’s not too hard to just turn off the bot if it becomes an issue i suppose
@Satsuma
Yeah for sure. Anyway I like the idea especially for Mastodon instances dedicated to specific topics, it allows hashtags related to the topic to get an automatic boost and make them slightly more visible.
@Gargron Oh wow. I didn't realise the API exposes server sent events. I thought I was the only one making APIs that do! I should really take a look at the API docs...
@gargron thanks! That's pretty great! Maybe people will get in the habit of tagging more too! :)
@frankiesaxx @Gargron there was one that boosted gameing related hashtags, but I think it disappeared .(
@Gargron what's the use case for this except making the signal/noise ratio worse? Feels like a tool for spamming
@victorbjelkholm @Gargron use case: you want to have a group of people talking about a certain topic and all people to be able to see all toots in the "group" without following all people in the group explicitly (or "pinning" the hashtag all the time).
Basically, groups like in StatusNet/GNU Social.
@victorbjelkholm @Gargron all people in the group, that is.
This is the single StatusNet/GNU Social feature I miss most on Mastodon.
@victorbjelkholm Well, first of all, boosts don't show up on public timelines so there's no noise. Secondly, it allows you to follow the bot instead of manually following everyone from an instance...
@Gargron I see, that does make sense. Still new and not exactly sure how everything works together, thanks for explaining!
@Gargron
That's pretty cool
@Gargron neat